How can the medicine work, if you’re not taking it?

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Like many of our institutions, the NHS is under considerable financial pressure, so it is only natural that attention should turn to the £14 billion a year that it spends on medicines. Last year more than £300 million worth of unused prescription drugs were thrown away in England alone. And as if that’s not bad enough, I am afraid the true cost of all the medicine wasted is considerably higher.

When you are dispensing to millions of patients some wastage is inevitable, but the real scandal isn’t that pharmacists and GP surgeries are throwing away drugs that are still in